Welcome to camp

S2: The Watering Hole

The compy let out a small, screechy yawn. It was curled up with two others, head raised and bleary-eyed. Darius was writing about them in the journal he'd found. It laid its head back down onto another compies thigh, looking rather cute.

Right up until they were chased away by a yelling Kenji.

Kenji: "Shoo, shoo, you retro iguanas!"

They scattered.

Darius shot Kenji a glare before following him up the bamboo ladder to the newly formed Camp Cretaceous.

It was several meters off the ground, kept up by multiple supports, one of which was a leg from the t-rex model skeleton from camp, dug deep into the dirt and reinforced by piled-up clay. Altogether it was about the size of a moderately large house, made out of planks of food with several rather precarious gaps between them. It had two storeys, the second one being mostly empty and serving more as a roof for all but the balcony of the first story, with wooden crates serving as an OSHA worker's nightmare/stairs.

Their beds were a shamble of whatever they could manage to make. Two of the bunks from the original camp had survived, but the missing bottom bunk on one was replaced by a hammock. Darius and Y/n were the only ones with single beds. Darius slept on a mattress, with the t-rex model's upper jaw serving as a cool-looking headboard. Y/n didn't even bother with a mattress, just using his jacket as a pillow and sleeping under a tent of raincoats salvaged from Main Street on the top floor.

Several blackboards from the genetics lab were used as walls to form "rooms", with a tally being scratched into one of them. Twenty-two total, one for each day they had had them. All but the exits had handrails to stop any of them, Kenji, from falling out.

Darius sat on a dirty couch with several strips of duct tape holding it together in front of a rough table.

Kenji stepped into the shower, blocking off everything below the shoulders with a set of pipes that had a sheet of hacked-together fabric hanging from it. They had managed to get a rudimentary system for running water thanks to how often the boys thought about the Roman Empire.

There was a clatter as a large plastic water bottle was tossed out of the shower by Kenji.

Kenji: "No mas agua. A little help."

Darius: "I got you, Kenj."

Yasmina, who had been on the sofa beside Darius, lent forward.

Yasmina: "If you keep doing that for him, he'll never learn to do it for himself."

Darius just shrugged as he picked up the water jug and went down the slide that they had made to transport materials easier. Y/n insisted that they should've made an elevator with vines and a pully system, but he was outvoted on the idea for a slide.

Y/n walked down the precarious stairs from the second floor, cracking his neck and zipping up his jacket with a yawn, the only sign of fatigue from being up all night on watch and only having gotten a couple hours of sleep.

Darius: "Uh, guys!"

Sammy, Yasmina, Brooklynn, and Y/n ran to the railing, Y/n grabbing something as he did. It was a simple spear, six and a half feet long, that had been sharpened to a point and hardened with fire. He had made a collection of weapons and tools, unable to help much with construction without the risk of ripping his stitches. His personal stash was on the top floor in his tent, the rest were scattered strategically throughout the base.

The four of them joined Darius at the edge of the river, the source of all their drinking and bathing water.

There was no river.